Surprising Science — December 1, 2009

Blazers of the Trail

The Royal Society was founded in 1650, and has been a vital hub of scientific research and exchange ever since.

In fact, as Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer have shown, the Society was a crucial link between the 17th century’s new culture of experimentation and its political traditions–transforming political methods of resolving disputes into methods that science still uses to allow different opinions to compete. Modern science wasn’t just performed there; in a sense, it was invented there.

You can see for yourself, thanks to the Society’s new website, Trailblazing, which was launched this week as part of next year’s 350th anniversary celebration. Here you can see a timeline of work performed under the Society’s auspices and read the original papers themselves, from Newton on the spectrum to a report on an 8-year-old prodigy named Mozart to Watson and Crick on DNA. Definitely safe for work, and also, very likely, a lot more interesting.

a computer generated image of a human brain.

Thinking

The great free will debate featuring Michio Kaku and Steven Pinker

Who — or what — really controls your mind?

Building destroyed by the Halifax Explosion. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

The Past

The largest accidental explosion of all time

More than a century ago, Halifax suffered an accidental blast one-fifth the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

a collage of photos of a man with a hat and a book.

High Culture

6 great books with wildly unreliable narrators

Dive into the twisted truths and concealed realities told by literature’s most unreliable narrators.

a group of five matches on a pink background.

The Well

Signs you’re burned out — and how to bounce back

If you don’t feel better after the weekend, the “burnout paradox” could explain why.

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7 min

—

with

Laurie Santos

Starts With A Bang

The trick to instantly identifying JWST images

If you can identify a foreground star, the spike patterns are a dead giveaway as to whether it’s a JWST image or any other observatory.

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